Recently, considerable attention has been focused on advertising over the Internet. While various techniques have been used to advertise goods or services over the Internet, the most popular of these is commonly referred to as “banner” advertising. In banner advertising, a portion of a web page accessed by computer users is dedicated to one or more advertisements for goods or services offered by a third party. Typically, all or part of the banner advertisement also functions as a button which, when depressed, immediately links the computer user to the advertiser's web site where additional information on the product or service is maintained.
Despite its prevalence on many web sites, banner advertising has been less than successful. One drawback is that, in contrast to other advertising mediums such as television where the audience is passively viewing programs and advertisements being broadcast, most computer users on the Internet are actively searching for content for review. As a result, by responding to a banner displayed on an opened page, the computer user must temporarily discontinue the very activity which initiated their search. Thus, unlike other advertising mediums, on the Internet, members of the target audience often resist clicking through to view the entire content of the advertisement being distributed. For example, some studies have shown that about 0.05% of computer users exposed to a banner advertisement respond to the particular ad.
Furthermore, depending on the speed at which a user clicks through a web page containing a banner during their search for content, some advertisements, particularly those that lack any eye-catching features, may barely be noticed by the members of the target audience. However, visually enhanced advertisements, for example, advertisements that incorporate full motion video or audio, which are more likely to draw a user's attention away from their original task, are often unsuitable for these uses since the download time for such advertisements would significantly slow a user's computer. As a result, the very visual enhancements which would make banner advertisements more appealing could also very easily alienate the very audience with whom an advertiser seeks to promote their goods or services.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,913,040 to Rakavy et al. is directed to a method and apparatus for transmitting and displaying information between a remote network and a local computer. Rakavy et al. discloses a data transmission technique commonly known as “polite push” in which data is transmitted from the remote network to the local computer only when utilization of the communications link between the two drops below a pre-established threshold value. By transmitting data in this manner, Rakavy et al. seeks to minimize the interference which a download of a full-motion video or other large data file from the remote network can cause with an Internet search or other use of the communications link by the local computer. Rakavy et al. further contemplates that polite push data transmission techniques may be used in an advertising application which takes user preferences into account. Specifically, Rakavy et al. discloses a database in which advertisements and user preferences are maintained and an advertisement display manager which selects and displays advertisements downloaded from the database.
While Rakavy et al. discloses the use of polite push technology for downloading advertisements to local computers and of selecting advertisements for display based upon user preferences, Rakavy et al. has failed to fully exploit either of these concepts. It is, therefore, the object of this invention to apply user preferences and polite push data transmission techniques to advertising mediums which involve the transfer and display of advertisements over a network such as the Internet.